I’m embarking on a new path in terms of recording the life stories of my ancestors.
Although I’ve written many family sketches, they were, for the most part, basic outlines of parents, children and spouses with BMD dates included if I know them and occasional added miscellaneous details.
Writing a single life sketch for an ancestor, though, is a limited edition activity for me. At the moment, I’m thinking of creating them for a 3X or 4X great grandparent so that more descendants might become interested in the family history. My ancestors had small surviving families back to the 2X greats, so the 3x greats are a good place to start for me.
I’ve read about several life story models described by other genealogists, ranging from Marian Woods’ bite-sized bios to full writing programs like The Non-Writers Writing Guide to Write Your Family History offered by The Creative Family Historian (closed in 2025).
Tackling a writing project, even if it is more comparable to a pamphlet than a published book can be overwhelming without a plan.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have decided on a format that is a blend of Yvette Hoitink’s 2023 Level Up Challenge and more outline formats of items to include in an ancestor sketch.
Yvette’s Level Up Challenge offers six stages of knowledge about an individual ancestor. Since Level 0 means an unidentified ancestor and I know who I’m writing about, that leaves five other stages to consider:
- Name only
- Vital statistics
- Occupation, residence, children, spouses, parents, siblings
- Property ownership, military service, religion, criminal activity
- History of town, houses where they lived, employment, pension, photos/history of employer, military units/ships, guardianship, poor relief, church and civic memberships
Each of those stages will be incorporated into the structure that I will be using. Note, though, that not all items in Step 4 or 5 might be relevant. For example, not everyone owned real estate, had military service or criminal convictions.
Ancestor Life Sketch
- Cover Sheet – for printed or PDFd stories; not needed for a blog post
- Timeline of the subject’s life
- Family tree – more than one generation, but no more than perhaps 3
- Life sketch
- Photos – if available
- Stories known about the person
- Social history
- QR code – if relevant
Note that elements 4, 5, 6, and 7 can be interwoven to make the subject’s life story more cohesive and interesting.
Some opt to place the timeline at the end, but I think it serves as an overview to that person’s life and use it almost like the topics to be covered.
With all the updating and new discoveries I’ve made on one of my maternal 3X great grandfathers, George Rogers Tarbox, I’m motivated to share a detailed life story in print. He’ll be first up on my long-term list.
This is an excellent plan, and I cannot wait to read your first story. I need to do some of this, too. Like you, I have written some already in my blogs about various ancestors, and need to put it all together.
Looking forward to reading your sketches.
A very tempting prospect indeed. I definitely saved Yvette’s blog post and have considered setting off on a similar path to you. In an ideal world I’d have full life sketches for all my ancestors, but there’s no where near enough time… Definitely something to consider for next year.
I look forward to seeing your entries into Yvette’s challenge 😊 – the example you propose makes perfect sense.
This sounds like a great project! Can’t wait to see your first life sketch. I’ll be interested to hear whether writing the sketch prompts you to do a bit more research to discover some new tid-bit.
I love this! I may be using it as well. Thank you for sharing!